Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

is this true ? what do you think?

U

utku sonmezer

Active member
Joined
Dec 11, 2010
Messages
42
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
istanbul turkey
I've just watched this stream and there are some interesting points. The stream is about an expo about filters. Some stuff confused my mind. Especially at 01:18:40 when mitch from abel cine brings the epic.
http://new.livestream.com/abelcine/FiltersExpo

1- According to Mitch, the epic is not as sensitive as the alexa or the f3. He says that the epic at 800 iso is not as bright as the others. Whats that supposed to mean? Isnt iso something standard?

2- He does some ir filter tests with the epic. And it turned out that only with tiffen hotmirror irnds we might get decent colors.

Guys from RED and reduser what do you think?
 
The thing about this kind of situation is that there is always some "voodoo" being done or as I like to say - the dark arts of cinematography.

All the cameras and filmstocks have different ways of achieving luminance and chrominance values and then recording them. Then they go through several signal chains and into our eyes and to our synapses.

thats a hell of a lot of variables.

when talking about luminance it's nice to start by knowing where your middle grey point is, and then figure out where you want "dark" and where you want "light" and what kind of gradient you can achieve on either side. There are others who may approach this differently as well - but that is the beauty of where "art comes from" - the stork of the imagination if you will.

philosophy and science are lovers in our artform.

because I'm kind of tired and full of food right now I don't feel like getting too into this - BUT - people will say all kinds of things that serve the right purpose at the right time.

Just ask Robert Evans.

IR filters can help you in many situations.

Digital video cameras will give you different results than raw digital cinema cameras.

A lot of this has to do with linear response vs logarithmic response to Signal/Noise Amplification and the way that A/D and D/A works with these things.

trust your eye, trust your waveform, trust your meter. most of all test and trust yourself.

Ultimately only your own tests will tell you what is true and what is false, and even then we sometimes lie to ourselves.

Make yourself an expert and then you don't have to buy medicine from other experts.
 
Really well articulated Dan K.
 
Red has the fortunate position to be a fan boy sort of phenomenon. The flip side is that everyone is going to attack them with the same fervor. These guys did indeed change the world and people are gonna hate them for it. We are going to see many more of these sorts of "tests" in the near future. Just saying...
 
Max Nguyen said:
Red has the fortunate position to be a fan boy sort of phenomenon. The flip side is that everyone is going to attack them with the same fervor. These guys did indeed change the world and people are gonna hate them for it. We are going to see many more of these sorts of "tests" in the near future. Just saying...
Click to expand...

hahaha :D
 
We tested Epic, Alexa and F3 against each other under identical conditions at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy last year. The complete results were published in Digital Production (Munich).

Very short excerpt:
The Epic is the least sensitive and has the highest resolution.
F3 and Alexa are more sensitive. Alexa and Epic have much better colors then F3.

Yes, the Tiffen Hot Mirrors are the best if you shoot with 0.9 ND or more.

Yes, Abel Cine is a very competent company.

Yes, we own one Epic and two Scarlets instead of one Alexa. And some Hot Mirrors.
 
Uli Plank said:
We tested Epic, Alexa and F3 against each other under identical conditions at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy last year. The complete results were published in Digital Production (Munich).

Very short excerpt:
The Epic is the least sensitive and has the highest resolution.
F3 and Alexa are more sensitive. Alexa and Epic have much better colors then F3.

Yes, the Tiffen Hot Mirrors are the best if you shoot with 0.9 ND or more.

Yes, Abel Cine is a very competent company.

Yes, we own one Epic and two Scarlets instead of one Alexa. And some Hot Mirrors.
Click to expand...

we just compared alexa and epic side by side with Utku (the OP) same lens same light same everything alexa looked 1,1.5 stop brighter than Epic.And dynamic range is noticable (even 5yo kid could tell the difference) only epic beats alexa at resolution and size
anyhow i love epic but alexa is better :) Its all about light so i dont think anyone would care about resolution more than DR.
(please dont start with HDR stuff again)
 
well you can apply this to how lenses work as well. you put all the t1.4 lenses side by side to each other, and they have a different feel of how much light is coming in due to how the optics are designed. as dan said, electronic sensors of different design are not immune to that. every sensor will have different gammas and different designs that will absorb the same amount of light at that iso rating but will show off the light in different ways. and I think all Mitch is saying is that the Epic shows up "darker"

but people need to be reminded that the oldest thing inside the epic is the sensor itself. it made the r1 a new camera, and all these other cameras are on a whole new generation of sensor design. once dragon comes out, it will really show who's ingenuity wins out.
 
PLEASE --- RED fix this issue with Dragon - better colors skintones and dynamic range. HDRX is not practical.
 
interesting test i have done:
shoot epic and alexa side by side at 800asa
both in log gamma
nail your white balance exactly

apply alexa rec709 transform to both in davinci
output 1920x1080 prores 422 or 4444

what differences do you see?

do this in daylight and tungsten, and mixed light if you have time

f3 looks really odd to my eyes

alexa and epic look excellent with epic having just a tad more crunch/contrast bite to my eyes

this can be attenuated with an ultracon 1/8-1/2 or similar depending on focal length and taste.
 
charles lim yi yong said:
PLEASE --- RED fix this issue with Dragon - better colors skintones and dynamic range. HDRX is not practical.
Click to expand...

Latitude, tonality, lowlight (possibly wider color space and better rendition). That's why they are so excited about Dragon, I think. Red guys had been teasing us for some time... I don't even know what I look forward to more, watching The Hobbit in Imax or seeing the first screencaps and test videos of Smaug the Dragon on Reduser, hehe :) The improvement in latitude should be apparent right away, especially in the shots with huge contrast difference and bright daylight outdoors. First of all there should be a comparison test between MX and DR and only after that you would throw in cameras with other modern sensors like *cough*Sony F65/55*cough*.
 
I think we are talking RAW here…

And comparing 1920 x 1080 @ Rec 709 is changing things quite a bit:

– downsampling improves on noise

– Rec709 can't hold the DR of either camera, and the final look depends on your interpretation of Log

– every camera has different Log curves, that's why they call it REDLogFilm, Log-C, S-Log …
 
Uli Plank said:
Yes, the Tiffen Hot Mirrors are the best if you shoot with 0.9 ND or more.
Click to expand...

Simple Hot Mirrors in front of regular NDs, or combined ND+IR filters?
 
Every glass to air surface counts, even with coating.

Combining is cheaper, though, and the difference is small.
 
What does a hot mirror do to the image/sensor that makes it so much better? That is to say, how does IR manifest itself in the recorded image? Conceptually I understand why LowCons should work on RED (spread light to brighten shadows whilst blooming highlights for a pseudo-softer roll off), but the hot mirror I'm less clear on (no pun intended.)
 
Mike P. said:
What does a hot mirror do to the image/sensor that makes it so much better? That is to say, how does IR manifest itself in the recorded image?
Click to expand...

It's about color really. The more powerful ND filtration you place in front of your MX sensor the more evident the effects of it's sensitivity to IR is. By blocking the IR you retain the most accurate color. If you do not, you will see a pink, brown, or reddish tint to your image. A colorist can correct minor color casts fairly easily, but the more IR contamination in the frame can really cause headaches in post.

I provide examples and some notes in my Red Quick Reference Guide here:
RedQuickReferenceGuide.pdf
 
Thanks Phil. As soon as I started reading your description, I remember about the pink/red cast of strong ND...
 
Uli Plank said:
...
Yes, the Tiffen Hot Mirrors are the best if you shoot with 0.9 ND or more.

Yes, Abel Cine is a very competent company.

Yes, we own one Epic and two Scarlets instead of one Alexa. And some Hot Mirrors.
Click to expand...

Uli,

Concerning hot mirrors, you're talking soley about the Red, correct? I don't believe you need to add IR blocking filters with the Alexa.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top